Rabbi and Moses’ 11th Commandment

Rabbi Dow Marmur at Toronto’s Holy Blossom Temple in his latest column in the Toronto Star (October 17, 2011), entitled ‘The next step to ensure Israel’s survival‘ – has dished out some interesting religious and historical points to convince the Jewish communities living in Diaspora that their survival as ‘Jews’ depends on a strong state of Israel.

Dow Marmur agrees with late professor Emil Fackenheim (University of Toronto) that the holocaust be added as a new commandment to the Biblical Ten Commandments. In fact, the Israeli Philosophy professor Yeshayahu Leibowitz was probably the first to define the holocaust as the ‘new Jewish religion’.

Based on this religious fantasy, Rabbi Marmur claims: “The safety and prosperity of the state of Israel would be the most obvious assurance that the 11th commandment would be observed. Though Jews as individuals, even communities, could live and thrive in many countries, only the Jewish (?) state could safeguard the continuity of the Jewish people”. Interestingly, in 2009, Israel Lobby, Anti-Defamation League (ADL) called goyim living in seven European countries (Poland, Germany, Austria, France, Hungary, Germany and Britain) ‘anti-Semite’. Because ADL poll showed 50% of the participants believed Jews living in those countries are more loyal to Israel than the country they live in.

Rabbi Marmur also claims that Washington and current Ottawa governments’ support for Israel is due to their ”guilt over the Holocaust“. I am sure if the Rabbi had studied Canadian history from some objective source – he would have found out that Canada fought against Nazi regime (with 150,000 German Jews serving in Nazi Army) and therefore, is not part of the holocaust. However, some Canadian leaders were got convinced by the World Zionist Movement that Ottawa, like Washington, should not accept Jewish immigration from Nazi-occupied Europe. The WZM wanted these European refugees to settle in British occupied Palestine. It was only in the 1950s that Canada began accepting Jewish immigrants from Europe.

Marmur quotes Hirsh Goodman (The Anatomy of Israel’s Survival) to prove that the Zionist entity doesn’t need legitimacy because “it has been long been legitimate, a lot more than many of the regimes that sit in judgment of Israel“. I wonder which countries the Rabbi had in minde which are not recognized by more than 40 members of United Nations, as is Israel? Moreover, professor Noam Chomsky in January 2011 Op-Ed in the New York Times, titled “Breaking the Israel-Palestine Deadlock”, had admitted that the two-state solution was dead and the global delegitimization of Israel has become a serious problem.

In 1947 – United Nations recommended partition of British occupied Palestine based on western ‘law of jungle’. It proposed 54% of Palestine for 31% of Jews (most of them illegal European settlers) and 46% to native Muslim and Christian Palestinians. However, the UN never had a chance to supervise the partition. The British occupation forces left Palestine without establishing the proposed ‘two-state’ solution (as they did in case of India and Pakistan). On May 15, 1948, David Ben Gurion unilaterally announced the establishment of state of Israel. Later its UN membership was passed on second ballot under Washington’s threat.

Dow Marmur wrote: “The only good solution is, of course, two states; Palestine and Israel living side by side in negotiated peace and mutually beneficial cooperation“. However, this not what Israeli leaders want. They want Palestinian to recognize Israel as “Jewish only” state even before the negotiations begin; forget about Palestinian refugees’ “right of return” and a de-militarized state on Gaza and some parts of the West Bank.

And the good rabbi did agree with Israeli policy to maintain militant Jewish settlers and army presence in the West Bank. “Jews may indeed have legal rights to the territory and the possibility of Iran gaining a foothold there through its terrorist clients constitutes a formidable security threat to Israel, yet occupation will lead to the erosion of Israel’s moral fibre,” wrote Marmur. In other words, the rabbi believes that the natives who resist the occupation of their land by an entity created by Jewish terrorist groups like the Haganah, the Irgun Zvai Leumi and the Stern Gang – are acting like terrorists!

I’m sure Marmur must have some rabbinical reasons for USrael to threaten Iran with sanctions and war but not Iran to have allies in the region to protect itself from USraeli design against Iran.